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A U.K. law requiring that pornography websites verify the age of their users took effect Friday.<\/p>\n
The BBC reports<\/a> that around 6,000 porn sites have said they will start verifying users\u2019 ages to comply with the Online Safety Act<\/a>, although at least one major site was not requiring age checks as of Friday morning.<\/p>\n The law also requires that online platforms prevent children from being exposed to harmful content, which is why sites like Reddit<\/a>, Bluesky, X, and Grindr have also begun asking users in the U.K. to verify their age through means including selfies or government-issued IDs.<\/p>\n This is just one of a number of new child protection laws that could normalize online age checks globally, according to Wired<\/a>. The approach has been criticized by groups<\/a> such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation as a threat to online privacy and anonymity \u2014 indeed, it\u2019s worth noting that in a recent breach of the dating safety app Tea<\/a>, many of the affected images were selfies and digital IDs uploaded for account verification.<\/p>\n Some internet users may try to get around age checks<\/a> by using fake IDs, selfies of video game characters, or VPNs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n